Latest Phobos Stories

ESA's Mars Express will skim the surface of Mars' largest moon Phobos on Wednesday evening. Passing by at an altitude of 67 km, precise radio tracking will allow researchers to peer inside the mysterious moon.Mars Express is currently engaged in a series of 12 flybys of Phobos. At each close pass, different instruments are trained towards the mysterious space rock, gaining new information. The closest flyby will take place on March 3 at 21:55 CET (20:55 GMT).From close range, Mars Express...

On March 3, 2010 Mars Express will make its closest ever approach to Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons. During a series of flybys, spanning six weeks, all seven instruments onboard Mars Express will be utilized to study Phobos. The close approach provides a first opportunity to perform a unique gravity experiment that may reveal the distribution of mass within this intriguing moon. ESA's Mars Express spacecraft orbits the Red Planet in a highly elliptical, polar orbit that brings it...

Today Mars Express began a series of flybys of Phobos, the largest moon of Mars. The campaign will reach its crescendo on March 3, when the spacecraft will set a new record for the closest pass to Phobos, skimming the surface at just 50 km. The data collected could help untangle the origin of this mysterious moon.The latest Phobos flyby campaign began today at 06:52 CET (05:52 UT), when Mars Express drew to within 991 km of Phobos' airless surface. The flybys will continue at varying...

On January 26, Mars Express completed its 7777th orbit around the Red Planet, an auspicious milestone as the satellite is readied for the closest-ever flyby of Phobos, scheduled for just a few weeks from now.Mars Express has been in orbit since December 25, 2003, returning a wealth of scientific information and some of the most stunning high-resolution imagery of the Red Planet ever. Its data have allowed scientists to measure the abundance of water ice and vapor in the martian subsurface,...

It rises in the east at sunset, pumpkin-orange and brighter than a first magnitude star. You stare at it, unblinking. Unblinking, it stares right back.It is Mars.This week Earth and Mars are having a close encounter. On Jan. 27th, the Red Planet will be only 99 million kilometers away and look bigger through a telescope than at any time between 2008 and 2014. The planet's 14-arcsecond diameter will remain essentially unchanged for another week or so, setting the stage for some good...

NASA's Mars exploration rover Opportunity is allowing scientists to get a glimpse deep inside Mars.Perched on a rippled Martian plain, a dark rock not much bigger than a basketball was the target of interest for Opportunity during the past two months. Dubbed "Marquette Island," the rock is providing a better understanding of the mineral and chemical makeup of the Martian interior."Marquette Island is different in composition and character from any known rock on Mars or...

Spectacular satellite images suggest that Mars was warm enough to sustain lakes three billion years ago, a period that was previously thought to be too cold and arid to sustain water on the surface, according to research published today in the journal Geology.The research, by a team from Imperial College London and University College London (UCL), suggests that during the Hesperian Epoch, approximately 3 billion years ago, Mars had lakes made of melted ice, each around 20km wide, along parts...

For the very first time, the martian moons Phobos and Deimos have been caught on camera together. ESA's Mars Express orbiter took these pioneering images last month. Apart from their "˜wow' factor, these unique images will help the HRSC team validate and refine existing orbit models of the two moons.The images were acquired with the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The camera took 130 images of the moons on 5 November at 9:14 CET over period of 1.5...

PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars. The spacecraft's observations were obtained from orbit after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Scientists controlling instruments on the orbiter found bright ice exposed at five Martian sites with new craters that range in depth from...

Officials are likely to recommend that the launch of Russia's leading planetary spacecraft, scheduled to take place in less than two months, be put off until 2011. The aim of the Phobos-Grunt mission is to gather soil samples from Phobos, one of Mars' two moons. Details of the suspected postponement were provided on RussianSpace.Web by sources within the Russian space industry, and the future of the mission is expected to be made public within a week.The final decision will depend on the...